


tell me about despair, yours, and i will tell you mine

by connorswhisk



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/F, allusions to sex but not like. actual smut, marlana fuck yeah, sort of a mini character study on both of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:46:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27528652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/connorswhisk/pseuds/connorswhisk
Summary: Alana Bloom and Margot Verger are married. They have a child, heir to the Verger fortune, and are successful in their respective professions. If you ask them about the night at Muskrat Farms where Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham were captured, and Margot's brother, Mason, was killed along with his assistant, they won't tell you about it. It's a delicate subject.But before all of that, they had to fall in love. Here is how that came to be.or,Filling in the missing moments between Margot and Alana's first meeting and Dolce/the events of Digestivo
Relationships: Alana Bloom/Margot Verger
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	tell me about despair, yours, and i will tell you mine

**Author's Note:**

> you are all SLEEPING on marlana they are so fun
> 
> title is from mary oliver's 'wild geese,' which reminds me of this pairing and margot and alana's characters in general

The Shadow, unhindered by any amount of pain or physical torture, has always been a part of Margot’s life, whether she wants it to be there or not.

And, God, does she not want it, but it’s like chewing gum stuck to the bottom of her shoe, been there so long that it’s hardened to a colorless shell, and no amount of scuffing and scraping will get it off.

Chewing gum is probably too trivial of a metaphor, though. The Shadow is exactly that, a shadow, doomed to follow Margot wherever she goes, constant, growing stronger every time she dares to imagine that things might be changing for the better.

“Silly Margot,” the Shadow tells her, a ghost of a sickening grin twisting the features of its ruined face. “Thinking she could get away. You’ll have to try again.”

She does try again, and again, and again, and again, and again, but by that point, her heart is barely in it, and her hopes are all but dashed.

Dr. Lecter had told her she could get rid of the Shadow, had told her that it was the best and only option for her if she wanted to keep living her life the way she was meant to, and Margot had done what she could, tried for a child with someone who could give it to her, and the Shadow had taken her baby, and her uterus, too.

Margot would like to kill her brother, but would that make her as bad as her former psychiatrist? Dr. Lecter, who’d mutilated the Shadow’s face? Dr. Lecter, who’d killed and maimed? Dr. Lecter, who’d eaten and _served,_ and Margot had never dined with him, but it had been a close thing, too close for comfort. Hannibal Lecter, who now has a bounty on his head, a bounty Margot knows her brother is all too willing to pay.

Despite it all, she feels… _indebted_ to Lecter. He hadn’t killed Mason, but he’d stripped him of a considerable amount of his power. Even if Mason’s sadism is still there. Even if he now has Cordell to assist him, to strike Margot when she transgresses, to wipe away her tears and collect them in a martini glass.

Margot knows what they plan to do to Lecter when he is caught. She can’t decide if he deserves it or not.

Maybe he deserves something worse for all he’s done, but she doesn’t know. She isn’t Will Graham. She isn’t Abigail Hobbs.

Sometimes, though, she wishes she could be. A change of scenery. Another person.

Dead, alternatively.

**———**

Mason Verger is insane. Even before she becomes his psychiatrist, Alana knows this.

She hadn’t known him before his altercation with Hannibal. She’d heard of the Vergers, everyone in the Maryland-Virginia area had, and she’d known, in the back of her mind, that Mason Verger was in charge of the company and estate, and his younger sister, Margot Verger, was there as well, resigned to her fate of never going to be able to get her hands on the family fortune. But the Vergers were nowhere near the things that were important to Alana at the time. How could they be, when Will was out of prison and she was sleeping with a cannibal?

_God._ The thought disgusts her, sends shivers of revulsion down her spine and makes her once-shattered pelvis ache, her fist tighten on the handle of her cane. It’s his fault that she’s like this, that she limps and hurts, and she’d found Will in the kitchen of Hannibal's house, and Will had all but told Alana that he _missed_ him.

How? After everything? Alana had wanted to ask, but Will had told her to leave, hand curling protectively over the scar on his stomach, and so she had, and she hasn’t been back to the Baltimore home since. She’s afraid that if she does go back, she’ll burn it down.

She’d left Will with no reluctance, because she’d tried to help him, she’d _tried_ to make things better for him, but Will Graham is beyond saving, and Alana thinks he knows it.

Mason Verger sends for her to be his psychiatrist, and Alana wonders if it’s because she knew Hannibal. And if it isn’t, then why would this ruined man who tortures pigs and has four accounts of aggravated assault from prior to his paralyzation want to talk to _her?_

But it is because of Hannibal. Everything is and everything always will be because of Hannibal fucking Lecter.

Muskrat Farms is a while away from Alana’s house, but Mason had told her in the email that he would have a room ready for her. He hadn’t included an estimate of when he would no longer require her services, but Alana hadn’t really expected one.

There’s a woman on horseback when Alana steps out of her car into the blustery wind, and she stops for a moment, fixes Alana with a piercing stare, before beckoning for Alana to follow her into the barn.

“Hello,” Alana says as the rider dismounts. “I’m Dr. Bloom.”

“You’re the new psychiatrist.” It isn’t a question, and it isn’t phrased like one. The woman’s eyes don’t falter from Alana’s face, and Alana feels a chill run across her back that has nothing to do with the cold.

“And you’re Margot Verger,” Alana returns, and the woman smiles like it hurts to do it.

“I went one exit too far on the expressway,” Alana continues. “Came back along the service road. I’m not sure if this is my entrance.”

An eyebrow raises. “This can be your entrance. It isn’t easy to find, first time you come.”

Alana raises an eyebrow in return, exhales briskly. “A witchy beauty about this place."

Margot starts to walk towards the door to the house, and Alana follows. Margot’s hair is tightly coiled into elegant curls, her makeup sultry, smoky, dark. A perfect _femme fatale._ There is a sensual air about the way she speaks, the way she moves, and Alana is certain of two things:

One - Margot Verger is a lethal combination of seduction and poison, and she is very, very dangerous.

and

Two - It isn’t going to take long for Alana to fall for her, and fall hard.

“You should see the estate in the spring,” Margot says, leading Alana through a long hall with walls adorned with portraits of landscapes, families, men. “Lilacs on the wind smell much better than the stockyards. You’d almost think we weren’t a family of slaughterhouses.”

Alana smiles and switches back to business. “Can you please let your brother know that I’m here?”

Any trace of a grin upon Margot’s face vanishes, her lips thinning, her features pulling tight. “Heknows,” she says.

He’s sitting out on the balcony, his back to the inside of the house. Margot puts a hand on Alana’s arm, stops her. It’s the first bit of physical contact Alana has ever had with her, and it’s rejuvenating.

“Some people have trouble talking to Mason,” Margot says quietly, slow and quick all at once. “If it bothers you, or you can’t take it, or he…I can answer any questions you might have. He can be a lot.”

“Thank you,” Alana says, and somehow her body feels heavier when Margot removes the weight of her hand. “One last thing?”

Margot inclines her head.

“Why not Dr. Chilton?” Alana asks.

“Mason didn’t like him,” she tells her.

Alana nods. “Many people don’t. And Mason imagines he’ll like me better?”

Margot shrugs. “Not sure.” She blinks slowly, seductively. “ _I_ already like you better, though.”

She leaves, hips swaying, boots clicking.

_Jesus,_ Alana thinks, and steps outside to meet her patient.

**— — —**

Alana Bloom has long, dark hair and red, red lips, and she reminds Margot of Snow White in looks and looks alone, because Alana Bloom is no princess. Maybe once she was, a long time ago, but those days are over.

“You shouldn’t hit your sister,” Alana tells Mason, the first time she witnesses it happen, at the dinner table after Margot makes some remark about Dr. Lecter’s therapy, and Mason nods at Cordell to deliver the punishment.

The Shadow doesn’t smile, because it can’t smile, but Margot knows, in the bottomless pit that it calls a heart, that it’s grinning. “Oh, but Dr. Bloom, _I_ didn’t hit her.”

Alana doesn’t flinch, and even through the stinging tears in Margot’s eyes, she can admire Alana’s daring. “An important part of the healing process is refraining from hurting others. Do you think Frederick Chilton would have allowed you to get away with that?”

The Shadow is silent, and for a moment, Margot thinks that it will order Cordell to hit Alana, as well.

“More salad, Dr. Bloom?” Mason asks instead, and Alana nods and says, “And an icepack for Margot.”

Margot presses the pack to her split cheekbone, Alana lays a hand on her knee underneath the table, and Margot nearly cries from the sensation of a gentle touch, from having someone in her corner again after so long.

She corners Margot after the meal, while Cordell and the Shadow are scheming about what they will do with Hannibal Lecter. Alana corners Margot in the hall, and she doesn’t wear perfume, but Margot smells it anyway, dark, bold, rich, familiar.

“Has he always done that?”

Margot had expected the question.

“Yes,” she answers truthfully. “As did our father.”

“To both of you?” Alana asks.

Margot nods. “And Mom, while she was still alive.”

“Can’t you get away?” Alana implores. She brings a hand up as if to stroke Margot’s welted cheek, but seems to think better of it. Margot wants her to touch her, and she never wants to be touched again for as long as she lives.

Margot shakes her head. “I have nowhere to go. I can’t let him have all this money.” She sucks in a breath, averts her eyes. “And I have no way of getting to it. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

“You tried to kill him?” Alana asks the question as calmly as if she’s asking about the weather. Margot supposes that it makes sense that Alana wouldn’t be surprised at her attempted murder, not when she’s worked for the FBI and aligned herself with man-eating Chesapeake Rippers, whether or not she knew it at the time.

“I did,” Margot says ruefully. “Obviously, it never worked.”

Alana’s ruby-red lips purse slightly, the lightest of presses. “Was it your idea? Or was it Hannibal’s?”

Margot closes her eyes. “I guess it was mine. He encouraged it. He wanted me to do it.”

Alana sighs. “I figured as much. What about a baby?”

Margot swallows. “I…I haven’t been able to find a donor.”

Thankfully, Alana doesn’t pursue it. “You’ll find a way out, Margot.”

“I hope so, Dr. Bloom.”

“Please,” Alana says, laughing breathily. “None of that _Doctor_ bullshit.”

Margot smiles, winces when it splits her cheek further. “Ok, Alana.”

It’s times like these, when Margot is in bed, alone, unable to sleep, her face or her neck or some other body part of hers aching from the Shadow’s latest slap, that she thinks of Will Graham, the man who almost fathered a child for her.

If only he’d succeeded. If only the Shadow hadn’t found out.

Margot had never felt real attraction to Will (men not particularly being where her interests lie), but she wonders how their baby might have turned out. Would he have had Will’s eyes? Margot’s mouth? Both? Or would he have had neither, would he have looked totally alien to the both of them, would he have looked like some monster, like Dr. Lecter, or worse, the one who stole him away from his mother?

Margot shudders. The thoughts aren’t exactly putting her to sleep.

She ponders over where Will might be now. Presumably, wherever Lecter is. Margot had never truly grasped the depth of the two’s relationship with each other, but then again, it seems that no one else has ever been able to, either. Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter are a never-ending game of song and dance, and it isn’t clear whether they hate each other deeply, or love each other insanely, and if they even know it themselves.

Margot knows that Mason has put a bounty on Lecter’s head. She knows what he plans to do to Lecter, and to Will, too, if he can help it. Mason and Alana track Lecter through store receipts, by observing the patterns of purchased food delicacies and Italian wines.

It would be much quicker to tail Will, watch where he ends up. Margot could tell her brother that. She could tell him, and Will would lead him straight to the man who didn’t kill him, but came close. Margot knows that if Will were to be found, everything else would fall into place.

And Alana knows that, too. Yet neither of them are willing to tell Mason this, and maybe it’s to save Will Graham, but maybe it’s to save Hannibal Lecter, too.

At this point, Margot isn’t sure which thought is more horrifying.

**— — —**

Alana, as much as she may have detested him in the past, misses Jack Crawford. It was nice to have someone in charge, to have someone who would take no shit and do whatever he could to right all the wrongs of the various killers and murderers and psychopaths of the earth. Even if Jack would often say the wrong thing, put Will in too deep, he had the right of the world, always, and he utilized that fact.

Who knows where Jack is now? Maybe he’s tracking Will tracking Hannibal tracking his next victim, one long and continuous goose chase.

If Alana were braver, and a better human being, she would call Jack right now. Have him shut the whole operation down, lock Mason and Cordell up and give Margot a chance to find a sperm donor to make a Verger baby. Get Alana away from this crazy man she calls her patient, get Margot away from the monster that is her brother.

But the dominant side of Alana is selfish, and ruthless, and vengeful, and she gets a delicious satisfaction out of imagining Mason eating Hannibal, piece by beastly piece. Everything that Hannibal’s done and everything he will do will come to an end once he is found, wherever in Italy it is that he is hiding.

The smaller yet still strong-rooted side of Alana wants to save Hannibal, to warn him, to tell him to run away. She wants to find Will and get him to safety, and she wants to feel comfortable with the certain knowledge that they’re both still alive.

It is not a feeling she enjoys. It is not something she is proud of. She is entirely _disgusted_ with herself that after everything, part of her still wants to see Hannibal Lecter live, when all that he deserves is to burn in Hell for eternity and a day.

She’ll wait, though, she’s decided. She’ll let Hannibal and Will be found, brought back to Maryland. She’ll allow fate to run its course and do what it wants to do, let the pieces fall accordingly. Because what Mason Verger still has not seemed to comprehend is that Hannibal cannot be contained. He will be captured, and he will be bound, but Mason will not eat him, and he won’t hurt Will, either. Alana is sure of it.

She will sit back and watch the show, and she will hold Margot’s hand while she does it.

“Do you resent Hannibal Lecter?”

Alana is surprised by the question. This is his psychiatry session, not hers.

“I was under the impression that we were discussing you,” she says politely, as politely as it’s possible to be when Mason Verger is your patient. “Do _you_ resent Hannibal Lecter?”

Mason grins, or tries to. The cold and grey morning light shining down onto the balcony, Mason’s preferred spot for his therapy, somehow succeeds in making the scarred and grossly smooth features of his face seem even more ghastly.

“He injected me with a happy-time drug, had me feed pieces of my face to Will Graham’s dogs, made me eat my own nose, and snapped my neck, Dr. Bloom.” He snorts, the holes meant to be his nostrils flaring slightly, a glob of saliva making its way onto his chin. Alana reaches out with a Kleenex and wipes it off, retracting her hand quickly in the fear that he may bite her. She can never be too sure.

“Yes,” Alana says, leaning back in her chair again. “But does that mean that you hate him?”

Mason seems to consider it. “It’s possible that ‘hate’ isn’t quite the correct term. If anything, I admire his work. Not that it was done to me, but that it was done.” A brief pause. “Eating him will be cathartic, but not in the way one might think. I think he’ll be pleased to go in the way I’ve decided he will.”

Alana says, “I imagine he might.”

And it’s true. If, by some utter miracle, Hannibal doesn’t escape, being eaten is no less than he deserves, and Alana knows that he knows that.

“Dr. Bloom, you haven’t answered my question,” Mason drawls. “Do you resent Hannibal Lecter? After he fed you human meat? Toyed with your heart? Manipulated you and Will Graham and indirectly had you pushed out of a window?”

“I think you already know the answer to that,” Alana says plainly.

Mason hums, though it’s really more of a grunt. “Yes, I suppose I do, I suppose I do.”

And then he calls for Cordell to prepare his lunch, and without further ado, the session is finished, almost as if it had never happened at all.

When Alana isn’t meeting with Mason, she’s trying to pinpoint Hannibal and Bedelia Du Maurier’s exact location. And when she’s not doing that, she’s with Margot.

They’ve formed a tentative friendship, one where Alana talks to Margot when she needs it and Margot walks with Alana around the grounds when _she_ needs it. Tentative, because Alana is sure they’re teetering on the brink of something bigger, something realer, edging nearer and nearer over the precipice of it. It’s only a matter of time, at this point.

_Not much time,_ Alana thinks, when Margot’s night-time visits to her ( _like teenage girls at a sleepover_ ) become longer, more frequent, and Margot wears nothing but the shortest robes, the slimmest kimonos, and when she finally leaves, she leaves Alana to her own devices, to her thrumming heart and rushing blood and indecent thoughts.

It’s impossible to tell which will come first: the capture of Hannibal and Will, or the union of Alana and Margot.

**— — —**

“We’re close,” Mason says. “I can feel it in my _bones._ ”

Margot doesn’t say anything. She’s not sure what her brother’s feeling, but _she_ feels that they’re no nearer to capturing Lecter than they were three weeks ago. They’ve had no word from anyone who’s seen him, no callers asking for the bounty money. All they have to go on are the deaths of two different men in Florence, one ruled as a suicide, the other a grotesque display of murder, and the receipts from a shop that are probably just coincidental.

The person who killed Anthony Dimmond might have been anyone. Local police seem to think it could be _Il Mostro di Firenze_ back for more.

But maybe Lecter and _Il Mostro_ are one and the same.

“Nothing to say, Margot? No remarks on this development?”

“I wouldn’t really call it a development,” Margot mutters. “More of a _hunch._ ”

There is no slap, not with Alana there, but there is the promise of one for later, a glare and a nod and a clenched fist from Cordell, the Shadow’s glittering eyes and crumpled features.

“Do that again,” Mason warns her. “And I won’t heed Dr. Bloom’s words a second time.”

“Mr. Verger - “

“Dr. Bloom, there are things you can’t force me from doing.”

Alana’s jaw clenches. Margot’s stomach roils. Cordell’s face alights maliciously. How Margot _hates_ that face, almost as much as she hates the Shadow’s, that face and its simpering, sycophantic servitude.

At dinner, Cordell “accidentally” spills boiling tea on Margot’s thigh, and she excuses herself without another bite to run her leg under cold water, the tears pricking at her eyes.

She hates how, even after all this time, the Shadow still makes her cry. She’s still weak to all of the insults, to the biting physical torture, to the manipulation. She should be past this. She’s _stronger_ than this.

But still the tears prick her eyes, still the droplets trickle down her cheeks and cause her mascara to run, still she cries.

Not thirty minutes later, Alana appears at Margot’s bedroom door, bringing with her two raised eyebrows and a couple of bottles of _aqua vitae,_ in the traditional sense of the word _._

“Where’s my brother?” Margot asks, standing aside to let Alana in, shutting the door behind her.

“In the kitchen with Cordell,” she says, setting the wine down on the tabletop of Margot’s vanity. “Putting the finishing touches on the master plan to cook and eat Hannibal Lecter.”

“Haven’t they done that fifty times over already?”

“Probably.” Alana smiles hollowly. “But perfection is key.”

“I guess so,” Margot says, and she pops open the first bottle, filling each glass with a generous amount of rich red Malbec.

“Is your leg ok?”

Margot huffs humorlessly, feeling her thigh twinge. “Yeah, it’s fine. Nothing I haven’t gotten before.”

She doesn’t look at Alana, doesn’t want to see her sympathetic face, so she just walks over to the bed, hands over Alana’s glass, and asks, “Who are we toasting to?”

Alana’s lips, the same color as the grape they’re about to drink from, twitch. “Definitely not to Mason. And not Cordell. And _not_ Hannibal.”

“No,” Margot agrees. “How about to Will Graham?”

Alana lifts her glass. “To Will Graham.”

Margot can’t be sure if they’re drinking to his health or to his downfall.

The kitchen is on the opposite side of the estate from Margot’s bedroom, which is good, because she can’t remember the last time she was drunk, and she tends to get a little loud when she is. Somewhere along the line, at a point probably between Margot’s fourth or fifth glass, she turns her face to Alana and says, “You know, I really pegged you for more of a beer girl.”

Alana inclines her head, face deliciously flushed, stray wisps of hair escaping her usual chignon, and says, “I was.”

Margot hums. “What happened to that?”

“I drank beer from Hannibal Lecter,” Alana says, and then she makes eye contact with Margot and they both burst into bouts of hilariously drunken laughter, until Margot’s eyes are once more flooded with tears, but this time of the good variety.

She calms down eventually, quick breaths still escaping her lungs, feeling better than she’s felt in…a long, _long_ time.

Margot looks over. Alana’s still giggling, and there’s a splash of wine on the collar of her normally pristine white pantsuit that’s probably never going to come out, and her bare throat is pale, pale, pale, and Margot _wants -_

“Alana,” she says suddenly, forcefully. “Alana.”

Alana stops laughing, pushes herself up on the mattress, sets her glass on the bedside table. “What? Are you ok?”

Margot’s never been able to answer that question with an affirmative, not once. “ _Shut up,_ ” she says, and swings her legs over Alana’s hips to straddle her, and kisses her harder than she’s ever kissed anyone else.

Alana starts slightly, but responds with just as much enthusiasm, sliding her hands up and down Margot’s arms, her shoulders, her back, her sides. She touches and touches, and Margot’s hands find their way to untucking Alana’s shirt, to running through her hair, and by the time Margot leans back for air, Alana’s hair is undone completely from its knot, her lipstick is smeared all around her mouth, and her eyes are as dark as ink.

“ _Fuck, Margot,_ ” Alana whispers, and Margot imagines that she must look similarly disheveled.

“Come on,” Margot says, climbing off long enough so that she can undress. “Come _on._ ”

Alana doesn’t say anything, but she complies.

When their clothes are strewn across the bedroom floor, Margot pauses.

“You’re gorgeous,” she murmurs.

Alana’s chest rises and falls. “So are you.” She reaches a confident hand out, runs a finger along the scar on Margot’s stomach. Margot shivers.

“Did he do this to you?” she asks quietly.

Margot squeezes her eyes shut, swallows, nods.

A kiss, feather-light, pressed to the puckered line of flesh. “I’ll kill him.”

Margot opens her eyes and catches Alana’s hand within her own.

“Or I will,” she says, and leans forward to kiss her again.

**— — —**

An Italian man calls with news of Hannibal, and afterwards, Mason is consistently unwilling to continue with their sessions.

“My apologies, Dr. Bloom,” he says. “But Cordell and I have a lot to do now that my feast’s delivery is imminent. I don’t currently have the time for psychiatry.”

“I completely understand,” Alana tells him, lying through halfway-gritted teeth. “Let me know if there’s anything you need.”

She’s relieved. One more therapy session spent having to listen to Mason talk about how much he _loves_ his sister, and she might have finally snapped, snatched away his stupid martini glass from Cordell’s fingers and broken it over Mason’s head. His face doesn’t need any more scarring, but _God,_ Alana would like to give it some herself, watch the blood stream down his face and feel a sense of victory as the light fades from his eyes.

But it isn’t her right to do that. It’s Margot’s, she knows, and she isn’t going to steal it away from her.

Alana offers to spend some time talking to Margot now that Mason is off the table, but she declines, forcing her eyes away from Alana’s.

“It isn’t exactly ethical for me to be having sex with my psychiatrist, now, is it?” Margot asks, with a smirk playing at the corners of her lips, and Alana has to resist the urge to kiss it off of her.

“You seem like you could use some time to talk about everything,” Alana coaxes, but still, Margot says no.

“If we get out of here,” Margot says, keeping her voice casual. “Then I’ll talk.”

Alana likes the sound of _we._ She doesn’t like the sound of _if. If_ means that Margot’s basically already resigned herself to living a life of misery forever. _If_ means she thinks she’ll never be able to escape her brother’s looming shadow. _If_ means she’ll never get the chance at happiness that she so boldly deserves.

Alana isn’t sure what she has to do to convince Margot otherwise.

Now that they’re…Alana isn’t sure what to call it - now that they’re _fucking,_ for lack of a better term, Margot _does_ seem to have become significantly lighter around the shoulders and the eyes, and Alana is glad for it. She just wants to continue that, further it along, so that Margot might actually smile and not look like it makes her face ache to do it.

The sex is good, though. The sex is _fantastic._ Compared to Alana’s previous two romantic partners (mentally unstable empath with fifteen dogs and an overly complex relationship with his psychiatrist, insane serial killer that kills and eats people with no apparent motive other than he wants to), this is a definite improvement. It’s new. Different, somehow.

“I’m not your first, am I?” Margot asks, as Alana traces her fingertips across her back, the haze of post-intercourse glow settled hot and heavy around them.

“Woman? No. There were a few others, back at university.”

“Were any of them as good as me?”

Alana smiles. “No. And neither were the men. It’s nice to be with someone that isn’t Will Graham or Hannibal Lecter.”

“Cheers to that,” Margot says, turning over and nestling her head beneath Alana’s so she can suck on her neck.

Alana hums. “Absolutely. I don’t need people like that in my life.”

Margot pauses. “People like that.”

Something’s up. “What’s wrong?”

Margot draws back carefully, not meeting Alana’s eyes. “Broken people, you mean. Like me.”

“Margot, you aren’t broken,” Alana says firmly. “And neither are Will and Hannibal. Will is very, very confused. Hannibal…” She contemplates how best to say it. “I don’t think he’s anything. I think he is a brilliant man with an incredible mind, and I think that those talents are utterly wasted on him.”

Margot shifts slightly, the sheets rustling. “But I’m not much to you. Once my brother carries out his plan and doesn’t need you anymore, you’ll leave. Back to Baltimore. Back home.”

Alana shakes her head. “Not without you.”

Margot laughs self-deprecatingly. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do,” Alana says. “I do.”

She’s not even surprised to find that she’s telling the truth. She thinks she’s known ever since she first arrived at Muskrat Farms, and Margot had greeted her on horseback, eyebrows raised, eyes alight with interest. She’d looked at Alana, and it had been so _different_ from the way that anyone else ever had, so unlike the unconfident gaze of Will Graham and Hannibal’s cold, unfathomable stare. Margot had looked at Alana, and Alana had _wanted_ her to look more, had looked back just as strongly and hoped it meant something.

She finds Margot’s hand with her own beneath the sheets, holds it tight, inflexible.

“I’m not leaving here without you,” she tells her. “And we’re going to kill your brother before we go. I’m serious. Completely.”

Margot sniffs, and Alana realizes that she’s crying. “And the Verger fortune?”

“We’re going to find a way to take it from him,” Alana states firmly. “Every last penny.”

“How?” Margot whispers, looking at Alana with wet, dark eyes. “How?”

“I’ll carry the child myself if I have to.”

Margot swallows roughly, and squeezes her eyes shut. She pulls Alana’s hand to her lips, presses a gentle kiss to her palm.

“Thank you.”

Alana runs a thumb along her lover’s face. “Of course.”

_Lover_ is the only word she can find at the moment to describe what Margot is to her, but she’s sure that it’ll change to something even realer, definitive, unshakeable. Soon enough.

And she thinks, with a savage sort of glee, that Hannibal Lecter will never feel _anything_ as strongly as Alana does when she’s with Margot.

**Author's Note:**

> whether or not alana is right about hannibal, who can say?
> 
> follow my [tumblr](https://connorswhisk.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/connorswhisk) where you can yell at me about marlana/hannibal/all kinds of other stuff


End file.
